Have you ever been to Indonesia? If you have a plan to travel to Indonesia, you should bear in mind that bribes are prevalent in Indonesia. Many Indonesian people value honor and saving face above life, but corruption is rife in business.
 In Indonesia, some immigration officers ask for bribes plainly. It is a reality that they ask for bribes openly even though they put up a "forbidden to receive bribes" sign.
 When foreigners who stay in Indonesia a long time extending their visa, they are definitely required to give bribes. In foreign students' cases, they need about 13 kinds of documents. After the submission, it takes about 2~3 months. In this complicated process, people have used bribes frequently because it takes a long time to send the papers to the men in charge without bribes.
 Actually, the Transparency International(TI) said that Indonesia is corrupt as it has received as low as a 2.8 out of 10 on the global corruption perception index. It is markedly lower than other countries which have similar GDP figures such as Spain(6.1) or Taiwan(5.6).
 In fact, however, Indonesian people don't think that bribes are bad because the bribery practice has been deep-rooted among public officials. A "bribe" has a similar meaning to "gift" in Indonesia. There is just an equivocal distinction between bribe and gift. Many Indonesian people tend to think that bribes are similar to Western "tips". That is, they think that bribes are something like alms that the haves give to the have-nots. Thus, the recognition that a bribe is not bad is widespread in Indonesian society.
 TI points out that corruption can't be eradicated in a short period of time because many Indonesian people know that light penalties are imposed on receiving bribes compared with other offenses. Because of this situation, Indonesia has to find solutions for this age-old issue.

 *Corruption Perception Index is a ten-point scale. The countries with higher scores have less corruption.